Background
Chrostowski was born in Russian Poland of a noble Polish Family.
Chrostowski was born in Russian Poland of a noble Polish Family.
He was educated in Moscow, where he was involved in revolutionary circles and joined the Black Hand Society.
He is known for Nihiliści, a Polish language play. Karen Majewski wrote, in Traitors and True Poles, that Chrostowski is an exemplar of an alternative Polish collective identity based on social class in preference to ethnic group or nationality. He was wounded in an attack on a government newspaper office which resulted in his expulsion under a police guard.
He was sent back home by the government.
He escaped or emigrated to the United States before 1887. Majewski wrote that "all traces of him seem to disappear within Polonia by early 1900s".
Except, in 1915, he was arrested "on a warrant charging him with being deranged" based on letters he wrote to President Woodrow Wilson and his Cabinet and was held for observation at Bellevue Hospital Center, and according to Majewski, he is listed in 1920 United States Census as a 48-year-old playwright.
Quotations: "on a warrant charging him with being deranged".
He was a self-proclaimed active member of the Russian Nihilist movement. He was a member of Ognisko, a New York group of immigrant radical leftist journalists and social activists.
